CGI gives us the first glimpse inside Porsche’s electric Mission E

Porsche has just greenlit the Mission E electric vehicle for production in the next few years. Video by Mackevision.

Have you ever watched a car commercial that features exploding cutaway views of cars in motion or impossible location shots, then wondered where the CGI cars they used came from?

As it happens, many of them are the same models used in online car configurators—those 3D renders of vehicles that let you play around with different paint or trim options. Since car companies are better at building physical cars than 3D models of cars, they have long partnered with CGI firms like Mackevision (which also does effects work for Game of Thrones) to build these digital models.

It’s a job that Mackevision’s CEO Armin Pohl described to Ars as “a blend between magic and logic” when we spoke recently. One of the company’s most recent efforts was work with Porsche on the Mission E, which Mackevision has shared with us here.

The Mission E was Porsche’s surprise at this year’s Frankfurt International Auto Show. It’s a four-seat electric vehicle (EV) with a 310-mile (500km) range and Porsche-levels of performance (600hp/447kW), aimed squarely at Tesla’s Model S sedan. Now, thanks to the cutaway animation in the video, we’ve got our first look under the Mission E’s skin. Logically for an EV, the new car’s underpinnings hew quite closely to the layout used by Tesla, with a so-called “skateboard” chassis that keeps the heavy battery pack low and between the front and rear motors.

The Mission E is part of parent company Volkswagen Group’s push toward electrification, something that began well before its diesels raised the ire of the US Environmental Protection Agency but which is in overdrive now as a result of that scandal. Although the Mission E was merely a concept at Frankfurt, Porsche’s board has approved it for production before the end of the decade. Technology sharing between stablemates at VW Group means we’re also going to see a production electric SUV from Audi and an EV VW Phaeton.

Pohl sees Mackevision’s work changing our car-buying journey. For example, before the days of the online configurator, daydreaming about a new car involved brochures and imagination. Now, we can spend hours obsessing over just what color the brake calipers should be on that supercar we’re never going to order.

“It’s a direct connection between the industry and the end customer,” Pohl told us. “It’s new for the OEMs—no one completely understood how much this will change the sales process.”

He pointed to the fact that it used to take five visits to a dealership on average before someone was ready to sign a contract for a new car. “Now it’s one,” he said. “Because of online car configurators.”